
Semi- Centennial 

1857—1907 



SEMI-CENTENNIAL 



LITCHFIELD 



Historical and Antiquarian Society 



ADDRESSES 



AT THE OPENING OF THE NEW BUILDING 



AND THE 



Presentation by the Mary Floyd Tallmadge Chapter, Daughters of the 

American Revolution, of a window in memory of the 

Revolutionary Soldiers of Litchfield County. 



July 5, 1908 



LITCHFIELD 



FlH- 

LiLizs 



Gifl 

The Society 



\ 

THE TUTTLE, MOREHOUSE & TAYLOR COMPANY. 



preface 



THE Litchfield Historical and Antiquarian Society is 
the successor of a Society of earlier date. The 
original Society was the result of a meeting held in the old 
Mansion House, which stood where Phelps Block now 
stands. This, meeting, held January 4, 1856, was called by 
a circular signed by several citizens of Litchfield and 
addressed to the different towns in the county. As the 
result of this meeting people came together on the thirtieth 
of January and organized the "Litchfield County Historical 
and Antiquarian Society." Occasional meetings were held 
for a few years and officers were elected, and then came a 
long period in which no meetings were held. The last 
meeting was held on the twenty-first of September, 1892, 
and a vote was then passed making over to any local 
Society, when established, the exhibits and property which 
the original Society had acquired. 

On the third of August, 1893, a meeting was held in the 
Town Hall at which the present Society was organized. 
For a number of years the property inherited from the 
County Society, and that which the Society acquired, was 
housed in the building on South Street formerly used as a 
store by Mr. Silas N. Bronson. It was felt that this was a 
very unsafe place for keeping valuable relics. It was there- 
fore a great relief when, through the generosity of Mr. 
John Arcut Vanderpoel, a room in the new fireproof Noyes 
Memorial Building, erected by him in pious memory of his 
grandmother, Mrs. William Curtis Noyes, was offered for 
our use. This building was finished and dedicated to the 



IV — 

use of the Wolcott and Litchfield Library Association, July 

5> I90 1 - 

The room given up to the use of the Historical Society 
was soon filled. Many valuable articles were either given 
or loaned by people glad to find a safe place in which to 
deposit articles which if lost or destroyed could not be 
replaced. Accordingly, Mrs. E. N. Vanderpoel, in loving 
memory of her son, added to the Noyes Memorial Building, 
affording thereby more room for book stacks, a room which 
is occupied by the Litchfield Scientific Association and a 
large room for the Historical Society. This addition was 
publicly dedicated to its uses on Friday, July 5, 1907. The 
occasion was made the celebration of the fiftieth anniversary 
of the organization of the Society and was made memorable 
by the presentation and unveiling of a stained glass w T indow, 
given to the Society by the Mary Floyd Tallmadge Chapter 
of the Daughters of the American Revolution. 



Semi-centennial of tbe Xitcbfielb Historical 
anb antiquarian Society 



FRIDAY, July 5, 1907, was a day that will long be held 
memorable by the Litchfield Historical Society, the 
Mary Floyd Tallmadge Chapter, D. A. R., and the citizens 
of Litchfield generally. In the morning the Historical 
Society had exercises that were not only dedicatory of its 
beautiful new building, but were in the nature of a semi- 
centennial celebration of the Litchfield County Historical 
Society, of which it is the successor. 

When the late John A. Vanderpoel gave our handsome 
library building as a memorial to his grandmother, Mrs. 
William Curtis Noyes, he had in mind the erection of an 
addition when the necessity arose. The rapid growth of the 
Historical Society and of the Scientific Association and the 
large number of collections of animals, birds, butterflies, 
insects, etc., secured by the latter, made imperative the 
erection of a suitable building where these collections could 
be housed and the two societies have their meetings. Mrs. 
Emily N. Vanderpoel, who had already been most generous 
in her benefactions, offered to erect the building needed as 
carrying out the original plan of her son and an addition to 
the Noyes Memorial Building. 

The new home of the Historical Society adjoins the 
Noyes Memorial Building on the east and the style is the 
same, the architects of both buildings being Ross & McNeil 
of New York, the latter a Litchfield boy. The main room 
is large, handsomely but simply furnished, with a gallery, 
and at one end is the D. A. R. memorial window. It is an 



2 

ideal meeting and lecture room and fills a long- felt Litchfield 
want. In the room below are the various collections of the 
Scientific Society and it can also be used for a banquet or 
meeting room, being complete in every detail. 

The morning exercises were under the auspices of the 
Historical Society, and the room was filled, while the 
addresses were all extremely interesting. After the invoca- 
tion by Rev. John Hutchins, the presiding officer, Rev. 
Storrs O. Seymour, D.D., President of the Historical 
Society, spoke as follows : 

A half century is a small fraction of the world's long 
history. Yet it forms a very large part of any individual's 
life. Fifty years ago this Society was framed under the 
title of the Litchfield County Historical and Antiquarian 
Society. Of the men who formed its membership not one 
from Litchfield is still living, nor is any of those who are 
noted as the Committee of Correspondence from the other 
towns of the County, so far as I can learn. 

In the original constitution of the Society the various 
objects of the Society are enumerated. It was to have in 
view the collection and preservation of such historical facts 
and data, biographical statistics, genealogical tables, record 
book, manuscripts, medallions, relics, etc., as may serve to 
throw light upon the history of the several towns and 
families in the County and the Indian tribes who formerly 
resided here, or to illustrate the lives and characters of such 
of the sons of the County as have been distinguished either 
at home or abroad. 

Fifty years have passed away, and if any ask the question, 
how have we fulfilled the responsibility so clearly assumed 
half a century ago, what reply shall be made? Certainly, 
my friends, we can confidently assert that to a certain 
extent this responsibility has been met. Not so fully as we 
might wish. Not so fully as the framers of the constitu- 



— 3— 

tion had hoped, but we certainly have been measurably 
successful, as much so perhaps as the circumstances would 
lead us to look for. Especially may this be said of the 
Society since its renewal about fifteen years ago. That this 
is so will be admitted, I think, by any one who examines 
the many valuable or interesting articles which form our 
collection. Many of these, some of them possibly the most 
valuable and not the least interesting, have been contributed 
or loaned within this period, while our membership has 
largely increased. 

The framers of our Society had in view very distinctly 
one object to be attained, and that was to keep in mind the 
names of the men who, prominent in the history of our 
County, had given brightness to its deeds and brought 
honor to their home. The number of such names was large. 
They have been recorded on the scroll of fame. Their 
memory has been kept green, and to this result our Society 
has largely contributed. At the time of its organization it 
put upon record the names of thirteen United States 
senators who had been born in this County; the names of 
twenty-two members of Congress from the State of New 
York, who had been born here, as well as nine judges of the 
Supreme Court of New York, and at least fifteen judges 
of the higher courts of Connecticut, and other states. To 
this roll the half century now past has added many other 
bright stars ; it will be the pleasant duty of our Society to 
keep in mind and to commend their virtues to the imitation 
of coming years. You will see, then, that valuable and 
interesting as is our collection of relics of the olden time, our 
Society has a purpose higher and more important than to 
offer a shelter to these reminders of the days that are past. 
A knowledge of the men who have lived here, and of the 
services which they have rendered to the town, the State, 
and the country, is indeed a valuable asset. To hold these 
men in high esteem for the noble acts which they have done, 



necessarily reacts upon the character of those who know 
and admire them. 

To keep their memory green and to hold them up as ideals 
worthy of imitation is a work which well deserves the 
earnest efforts of our Society. When this Society was 
started it hoped to gather here portraits of some of the 
notable men who were born in this County. In this direc- 
tion no great progress has been made. How valuable a 
gallery might be formed, could we hang upon our walls the 
portraits of Oliver Wolcott, Tapping Reeve, Col. Benjamin 
Tallmadge and his son, Frederick A. Tallmadge ! We have 
promise of one of Joseph Bellamy, the great preacher of his 
day, whose works, as another has said, "are sought for by 
the Christian scholar wherever the English language is 
spoken." It is easy to see how family feeling and a pride 
of ancestry keeps those and other portraits in the possession 
of their descendants, and probably few of them will come 
into our hands. Still the fact that here can be offered a 
secure shelter for them, and that every care would be taken 
to preserve them, and present them to the gaze of the people 
who honor and admire the character of the. originals, may 
as time goes on induce some families to hang their pictures 
on our walls. 

In an address delivered by the Hon. Gideon H. Hollister, 
when this Society completed its formation, are these words : 
"In order to induce the public to feel an interest in our 
efforts we ought as soon as possible to provide ourselves 
with suitable rooms. I hope the day is not far off when 
our means will enable us to erect a handsome fireproof 
building ample for * * * uses connected with the institu- 
tion." To-day this hope stands fulfilled, not because the 
means of the Society were large enough to warrant the 
outlay but because in the mind and heart of one of our 
members there was the noble and generous purpose to 
prepare a fit temple in which may be sustained the high 



— 5— 

ideals of our Society, where may be found a safe resting 
place for the collections which we have made. 

This generous purpose has been nobly planned and 
executed, and its fulfillment enables us this day to celebrate 
our semi-centennial with exulting joy. As a Society we 
express to our generous benefactor our hearty thanks, and 
believing that her work will enable us to carry on and to 
perpetuate the objects for which we exist with greater 
assurance of success, we pledge ourselves to renewed efforts 
in this direction and express the hope that through many a 
happy year she may witness our prosperity, to which in 
times past and also to-day she has contributed so much. 

At the close of Dr. Seymour's address, the Hon. George 
M. Woodruff spoke as follows on the "Organization of 
the Litchfield County Historical and Antiquarian Society'' : 

For two centuries and more after the landings at James- 
town and Plymouth the settlers in this country were too 
much occupied in the making of history to give much time 
and attention to the recording of it. Connecticut had its 
full share in the making of that history, but beyond the 
keeping of Colonial, town and church records, little was 
done in the historical line. We have Trumbull's "History of 
Connecticut," the first volume of which was published in 
1797, the second in 1816, and Barber's "Connecticut 
Historical Collections" in 1836. Locally there were the 
"Statistical Account of Several Towns in the County of 
Litchfield" by James Morris, published about 1814, Wood- 
ruff's "History of Litchfield" in 1845 and Kilbourne's in 
1859. It was not till 1825 that Connecticut had a State 
Historical Society even in name. On the Fourth of July, 
1822, the Rev. Thomas Robbins delivered an address before 
a number of military companies assembled at Hartford, and 
probably as a result of this address the General Assembly in 



—6— 

1825 incorporated thirty-one gentlemen as the Historical 
Society of Connecticut, of which Hon. John Trumbull was 
made President; Bishop Thomas C. Brownell, Vice Presi- 
dent ; Rev. Thomas Robbins, Corresponding Secretary, and 
Rev. George W. Doane, who was subsequently Bishop of 
New Jersey, Secretary of the Standing Committee. The 
Society held several meetings, but languished till 1839, when 
a new impetus seems to have been received from the centen- 
nial celebration at New Haven the previous year. The fine 
library room in the Atheneum at Hartford, completed in 
1843 and the selection the next year of the Rev. Thomas 
Robbins as Librarian, made the Society the successful 
institution it has since become. 

The publication of Woodruff's history in 1845 turned 
the thoughts of our own people in the direction of historical 
research, and the Marsh and Buel picnic the next year, of 
which Dr. Seymour gave you an account last fall, quickened 
this interest, which the Litchfield County centennial, cele- 
brated here in 1851, made more general. This interest took 
form in the issuing of a circular dated January 4, 1856, 
signed by Seth P. Beers, William Beebe, Geo. C. Woodruff, 
G. H. Hollister and P. K. Kilbourne of Litchfield, John 
Boyd of Winchester and Chas. F. Sedgwick of Sharon, 
calling a meeting to be held on the thirtieth of January at 
the old Mansion House for the purpose of organizing a 
County Historical and Antiquarian Society. This meeting 
was duly held and Hon. Seth P. Beers was made chairman 
and Payne Kenyon Kilbourne secretary, who read, as he 
expressed it, "a few suggestions" which were so pertinent 
and interesting that I will give them at some length. 

He said : "Of the benefits and advantages of the Connec- 
ticut Historical Society I need not speak. It has done and 
is doing much to foster and carry out the laudable designs 
contemplated by its founders. But it is equally and perhaps 
necessarily true that its exerts very little influence beyond 



the limits of Hartford County, within which it is located. 
Indeed, its existence is scarcely felt at all in this part of the 
State, except by those who have occasion to visit Hartford 
for the purpose of consulting" its noble library, for which it 
is indebted to Dr. Robbins, a native and at present a resident 
of this County. 

"To obviate in some degree the want thus indicated it is 
proposed to establish a County Historical and Antiquarian 
Society, with the view of awakening an historical interest 
in the minds of the people in this corner of the State, and 
through the medium of records, books, lectures, correspond- 
ence and such other ways and means as may from time to 
time be devised, bring the advantages derivable from such 
an association more immediately within the reach of us all. 
Probably all those of our number who have had anything to 
do in the way of gathering historical and genealogical facts 
and statistics, have felt a regret that the work has not been 
sooner begun. Our County and all the towns composing it 
are still in their infancy ; and yet many important facts are 
lost to us and the world for want of a timely chronicler. 
Our aged people, whose memory goes back almost to the 
time when this entire region was a wilderness, one by one 
are leaving us ; and with them are being buried stores of 
information which such a Society as the one contemplated 
would have preserved from oblivion. A thorough syste- 
matic effort, even now, may secure for all time to come, 
much that will otherwise be irrevocably lost. Now we may 
lay the foundations of a more complete and perfect history 
than any people of antiquity could ever claim for them- 
selves ; and the generations who may hereafter find their 
homes on these hills and in these valleys will not have cause 
to lament that the history of their County is lost in tradition 
and fable. It should be our purpose to gather up and 
preserve not only the history of our towns and other cor- 
porations, but also that of individuals and families. The 



— 8— 

subject of genealogies is so nearly allied to that of history, 
that it may fairly be considered in the formation of our 
Society. It may also be within our province to collect such 
facts as may be accessible relative to the aboriginal inhab- 
itants of this County. Our venerable friend who has so 
recently taken his departure from our midst (Dr. Abel 
Catlin) had a distinct recollection of the time when the 
Indians from a distance were accustomed to make their 
periodical visits to Litchfield for the purpose of fishing in 
our waters and hunting in our forests. And it is not 
improbable that there are aged people now living, especially 
in the northern and newer portions of our County, who can 
give information concerning the tribes or remnants of tribes 
who were living within our borders sixty or seventy years 
ago. Relics of that almost forgotten race have in years past 
often been turned up by the spade and ploughshare. Their 
arrows, mortars, pestles, hatchets and rude specimens of 
statuary have been found in our soil, but for want of some 
general depository, many of them have been scattered and 
ultimately lost. Could they be gathered together in one 
place they would form an interesting cabinet and throw 
much light on the manners and customs of a people of 
whom they may be called the sole remaining representatives. 
Should it not be one of our aims to form a nucleus for these 
interesting relics of a race who preceded us on our native 
soil?" 

The Hon. John Boyd of Winchester, who subsequently 
published "The Annals of Winchester," followed with 
some remarks. He said "he had long felt the need of some 
efficient local organization, similar in its designs to that 
suggested in the call which had brought us together. This 
feeling in his case had been increased by the late 'Centen- 
nial Celebration' in the County." He argued that the 
subject of genealogy was becoming more and more 
important or, at least, that the interest in it was yearly 



becoming deeper and more general in the community. 
People who a few years since had never thought of the 
subject are beginning to ask who their fathers were, where 
they lived and where and when they died. He said there 
were many interesting facts and statistics in regard to the 
origin and progress of different branches of manufacture, 
which might be collected and preserved by means of this 
association. He once asked Colonel Harris (whose father 
was a pioneer in the scythe business in this region) concern- 
ing the origin of that business in the family; he replied, 
"My father bought a negro in Litchfield who learned him 
the trade." 

After further remarks by Rev. H. L. Vaill, Stephen 
Deming, Rev. Benjamin L. Swan and others it was 
unanimously voted, "That it is expedient at this time to 
organize a Litchfield County Historical and Antiquarian 
Society," and at a subsequent meeting the Society was duly 
organized and a constitution adopted. Of the thirteen 
gentlemen then appointed to office, none survive. 

A number of meetings of the Society were held. As 
indicative of the general interest in the subject it may be 
noted that on the occasion of the meeting at which the 
introductory address was delivered by the Hon. Gideon 
H. Hollister, the Superior Court then in session, Hon. 
Origen S. Seymour, Judge, adjourned, to enable the Society 
to hold its meeting in the court room. 

At the May session of the General Assembly, 1856, the 
Society was duly incorporated. Addresses and sketches 
upon various subjects were read before the Society, includ- 
ing "Sketches of the Unpublished History of Sharon and 
its Vicinity," by General Charles F. Sedgwick; a report 
upon the "Disputed Question of the Birthplace of General 
Ethan Allen and Hon. Ephraim Kirby," by Payne Kenyon 
Kilbourne; and "The Steady Habits of Litchfield County 
in the Olden Time," by Rev. D. L. Parmelee. All these 



addresses and reports were, as appears from the records, to 
be lodged in the archives of the Society "for reference and 
preservation," but I have not been able to find any of them. 

On the twelfth day of July, 1859, Mr. Kilbourne, who 
had been the most efficient member of the Society, and its 
secretary, died and at the next annual meeting on Septem- 
ber 19, i860, so few members were present that the meeting 
was adjourned till the third of October and then again till 
the tenth, when the former officers were all reelected, but 
nothing further was done. 

For more than thiry years this was the only meeting of 
the Society, but it had acquired an interesting collection 
of antiquities and curiosities and a small but valuable collec- 
tion of books and pamphlets, and after your local Society 
was organized, the Litchfield County Historical and Anti- 
quarian Society, at a meeting on the twenty-first of Septem- 
ber, 1892, upon motion of the late Judge Edward W. 
Seymour, voted, "That when a local Antiquarian or 
Historical Society shall be established in Litchfield and shall 
have proper accommodations to store the exhibits and 
property of this Society, such property and exhibits shall be 
made over to such local Society." This transfer was duly 
made and Mr. Ransom and myself alone remain of the 
former members of the County Society. 

The next speaker, Rev. Samuel Hart, D.D., Professor 
at the Berkeley Divinity School, Middletown, and President 
of the Connecticut Historical Society, said: 

First of all, Mr. President, let me speak a word of con- 
gratulation, both official and personal, on this most pleasant 
occasion. If any public institution should be well housed, 
it is an historical society; if any historical society is well 
housed, it is yours. My special topic for this morning is, 
"Types of Colonial Settlements in Connecticut" : 



— II — 



The Colonies of New England have had from the first 
very much in common. Not only have they, in great part, 
the same physical features, but they were settled by substan- 
tially the same people, with substantially the same ideas, and 
for substantially the same ultimate purposes ; and their 
growth has been under not very dissimilar conditions. 

But no sooner do we note the points of resemblance 
among the settlements which made up the Colonies of 
Massachusetts and Connecticut, than our attention is called 
to points of difference. There were two original settlements 
in what is now Massachusetts, which were after a time 
united by the possession of a royal charter; and in the 
present limits of Connecticut there were also two original 
Colonies, besides the military post at the mouth of the great 
river, and one of these was absorbed by the other under the 
operation of a charter which the latter secured from the 
King. The earlier of the two Colonies or settlements in 
Massachusetts had its beginning with a company of Inde- 
pendents or Separatists from the Church of England — 
Pilgrims we call them — who had come out from that Church 
as from Babylon, had fled to Holland, and thence had 
sought a home in the new world. They came without any 
color of authority from the State, though they afterwards 
obtained a patent from the Council for New England. As 
Independents, and as an entirely new government, they held 
to no connection between Church and State ; and no religious 
test was ever required among them as a condition of exercis- 
ing the franchise or of holding even the highest office. 

The other Massachusetts Colony, that of Massachusetts 
Bay, dating at Salem from 1629 and at Boston from 1630, 
was a settlement of Puritans, that is to say, of men who held 
that they were members of the Church of England by law 
established, but of that Church as reformed or in process 
of reformation from serious errors both of doctrine and of 
practice. 



— 12 — 

This Colony had a charter, upon which they engrafted 
provisions for the maintenance and carying out of the prin- 
ciples which they deemed necessary for the perpetuity of a 
government such as they wished to establish; and when 
they had made their settlements and had matters practically 
in their own hands, they provided that no one should there- 
after be admitted to take any part in public affairs unless 
he were a member of their ecclesiastical organization. It 
was the latter of these two Colonies that became the 
stronger, very largely no doubt by reason of the advantages 
of its position, but still more by reason of the stern resolu- 
tion and the unmistakable ability of its leading men for more 
than one generation. There was a long struggle to retain 
the old charter ; and when it was declared forfeited and the 
Bay was made a royal Colony under a new charter, the 
earlier, Independent, and more liberal settlement of Plym- 
outh, which had but a feeble existence for some seventy 
years, was incorporated into the later, Puritan, close cor- 
poration of Massachusetts. The latter, however, in the 
process lost a large part of its closeness and rigidity; for 
the new charter, dating after the revolution in England, 
forbade the application of religious tests for citizenship. In 
outward form Salem conquered, but in principle Plymouth 
was rather the victor. 

The settlers of the river towns which were included in the 
original Colony of Connecticut came from Massachusetts, 
the few Plymouth men who reached Windsor in 1633 
having made no permanent settlement. They were an off- 
shoot of the Bay, bringing with them a constituted civil 
authority, and being one Colony from the first, though they 
settled in three communities. The constitution which they 
soon established was not a confederation or an entirely new 
establishment of government; it was rather such adjust- 
ment of former conditions as seemed wise to them when they 
found themselves, or made themselves, quite independent of 



—13— 

their mother colony. There was never a religious test in 
the Colony of Connecticut, except for the one proviso that 
the governor must be a member of the church. 

Our other Colony, that of New Haven, was more Massa- 
chusetts-like than Massachusetts itself. Mr. Davenport and 
his colleagues expected to establish at the fair haven which 
they discovered setting back from the Sound, if not the 
millennial kingdom, yet a true theocracy ; and certainly none 
but a member of the church could be allowed to have any- 
thing to do with what might be thought the secular side of 
the affairs of such a state. 

Thus the Colony on the river and the "confederation" on 
the Sound were organized on principles which differed, 
speaking generally, as did those of Plymouth and Massa- 
chusetts Bay. But here it was the Independent settlement — 
at least that organized on Independent or Separatist prin- 
ciples — that prevailed. Neither Connecticut nor New Haven 
had at first a charter, and exercised its government in its 
own way ; and from the first Connecticut was the stronger ; 
not so much on account of position or of mercantile advan- 
tages, as because of its form of government and the methods 
of its administration; and that too, although part of its 
towns before the time of union lay on the Thames and part 
beyond Milford, touching on the west another unit of the 
New Haven "confederation" in Stratford. 

When the King "came to his own" again, Connecticut 
secured a charter for what was practically a free and inde- 
pendent government ; and — what is pertinent to our present 
subject — the limits which the charter gave to the Colony 
were such that it was made to include all the New Haven 
towns. So then, as I was saying, while in Massachusetts 
the Puritan principles prevailed, in Connecticut it was the 
Independent principle which gained the ascendency. But 
there are "survivals" of each of these types to-day within 
the limits of our happily united commonwealth. 



—14— 

Now, I think that this difference of original type among 
the settlements now merged in the good State of Connecti- 
cut has a visible survival in the topographical plans adopted 
by the different companies of settlers. Those who came to 
the Connecticut Newtown from the Massachusetts New- 
town, to Hartford on the great river from Cambridge near 
Boston, came that they might carry out their principles in a 
state which they desired to found. They came under their 
own leaders, with plans in part matured and in part ready 
to crystallize into form, glad to leave the brethren with 
whom they had not found themselves quite in accord, and 
the more glad that they were leaving them before they had 
come to an open breach. It was practically an independent 
settlement of those who were to found an independent state. 
IVe may see this intimated, I think, in the lay-out of the 
settlement — something practical, sufficient for the present, 
yet allowing the possibility of growth. At the crest of a 
ridge, the slope of which rose not very steeply from the 
river, and under the protection of another ridge running 
nearly at a right angle to it, they selected a plan for the 
center of their town, making room there for a building 
which should be meeting-house both for Lord's day and 
for week-day public assemblies and room also for a burial- 
place. Thence there led a street in a direction parallel to 
that of the general course of the river, and another which 
led to the river itself, and the town was laid out with its 
square and its two roads. From this simple plan it grew 
as need required or opportunity was afforded. The long 
road is now Main Street, and from it the land slopes both to 
the east and to the west ; the other has become State Street, 
and it still leads to the principal landing on the river. 

The plot of ground on which stood the first meeting- 
house and in which the first of Hartford's dead were laid 
to rest, has been encroached upon, but it still affords room 
for the City Hall (long the State House) and the postoffice. 



—15— 

The nature of the growth of Hartford can be seen by any 
one who studies its map or walks down Main Street; it was 
long without special order or method. 

The development of each side of the settlement was 
determined by practical considerations; and how different 
these were on the east and on the west can be seen by the 
fact that there is no street crossing Main Street, and that in 
almost no case does a street that reaches it on one side find 
exact correspondence with a street on the other side. All 
testifies to a practical, or would-be practical, community, 
attempting to satisfy its needs as they arose and to have a 
place convenient to live in. We can see, I think, in the 
simple first outline, and then the irregular growth of Hart- 
ford, an embodiment of Mr. Hooker's idea of a new state, 
holding to simple principles and fitted to adapt itself to the 
needs of a practical people. 

On the other hand, the theocratic purposes and mercantile 
character of the community found an expression in the plan 
of New Haven. As soon as the settlers began to build on 
the level ground, they marked a four-square city, like that 
described in the Revelation, of which the length and the 
breadth were equal. What is now called George Street was 
measured a half mile in length, and on it a square was con- 
structed, the other boundaries being the present York, Grove 
and State streets. Then this square was divided into nine 
equal squares by two streets parallel to Grove Street and 
two at right angles to it; and the central square was 
reserved as common land for the meeting-house, the burial 
plot, whipping-post and other public uses. 

There were other common lands outside of the great 
square; and to these, as well as to a landing-place on the 
harbor, irregular lanes or roads led ; but the outline of the 
town itself was entirely symmetrical, and the symmetry of 
that part of New Haven has been well preserved. It has 
been practically impossible to encroach upon the central 



— 16— 

public square ; and the Green of the city, dignified by stately 
church edifices, and (may we say it?) by the removal of the 
State House, in unshorn proportions and surrounded by 
ancient mansions and modern structures for public uses 
and academic piles, testifies to the thoughts of those who 
laid it out. It embodies an idea of dignity and solidity and 
conscious completeness which is lacking elsewhere; it tells 
of a community with a lofty religious principle and a strong 
element of worldly respectability. One does not wonder 
that the people of New Haven objected to being incorpo- 
rated into the slightly older and much more democratic 
colony to the north. 

If from Hartford we look to its neighbor towns, parts 
of the same Colony, we find in Windsor and Wethersfield 
the same river road which in Hartford ran along the ridge, 
only here on level ground and widening out into a green, 
on either side of which the settlers built their homes, and 
from which their portions of land stretched on the one side 
to the river and on the other side to the hills. Guilford, a 
town of the New Haven "confederation," was a typical 
settlement of farmers, though in its theories closely allied 
with the community of well-to-do merchants and traders 
further west. It, too, had its central green, with houses all 
around it, but there were no other squares to protect their 
common, and fields for tilling and grazing must have come 
close to the homesteads of all the settlers. 

Saybrook, which antedates New Haven by several years, 
and (perhaps) Hartford by a short time, was before all 
things else a military post. Lion Gardiner's first work there 
was to build a fort at a convenient spot to guard the mouth 
of the river, and the extremity of a point of land actually 
within the river's mouth was selected for that purpose. 
Then the neck of this point was protected by a stockade, 
and places were assigned for the residences of the "persons 
of quality" who were expected to arrive from England. 



—17— 

There is very little now to remind one of the original 
purpose and plan of this settlement, but it is of interest as 
being unique within the borders of the State. We are pass- 
ing now from the quarter-millennial anniversaries of the 
oldest towns in our Colonies to the bi-centenaries of towns 
of the second generation, such towns as Newtown, with its 
broad extent of farming lands, and New Mil ford, with its 
opportunity of using the forces stored up in a river. These, 
and after them, settlements still further to the north and 
west, such as that in which we now stand, marked the 
frontier of those days, slowly but surely pushing on, taking 
possession and holding for men's use more and more of the 
soil, yet always watching against the dangers of the yet 
unconquered wilderness. These towns, too, show by their 
topography and the traces of their ancient plans the purpose 
of their settlers, how they held to the old custom of a broad 
common-like street, and how (perhaps unconsciously) they 
prepared for the comfort and delight and health of those 
who inhabit them in these later times. But on all this I may 
not dwell. It must suffice to have reminded you that in the 
early settlements of that which since the year 1662 has been 
the one Colony or State of Connecticut, we find different 
ideas differently maintained and expressing themselves in 
differing ways ; and it would seem to be not uninstructive 
or unpleasant to note how these ideas have prevailed, have 
supplemented one another, and have been brought into 
harmony, as the years have passed on. 

Dwight C. Kilbourn, Esq., the well-known historian of 
Litchfield, and Clerk of the Superior Court, spoke as 
follows : 

Fifty years ago the founders of this Association did not 
know, nor could they have prophesied what changes in the 
mode of living, what achievements in knowledge, what 
victories of mind over matter would take place in this brief 



— 18— 

half century that would furnish material for the purpose of 
this undertaking. 

There were rumblings in the political sky, as there ever 
have been and ever will be, but the great Civil War was not 
even a cloud thereon. 

Little did they dream, when placing these few Indian 
arrowheads and old sermons on those pine shelves in Sey- 
mour's new brick building, of such a beautiful building as 
this being erected to hold the precious mementoes of Litch- 
field's sons, who went forth upon the bloody field of battle 
to perpetuate this Nation in whose founding Oliver Wolcott, 
Roger Sherman, Benjamin Tallmadge and Elisha Sheldon 
were potent factors. 

It gives me at this time peculiar pride to know that the 
memories of nearly four hundred Litchfield men of the rank 
and file, who when their government called them to its 
defense nobly responded, may be preserved in these rooms 
by some tangible objects connected with them while living. 
That while their mouldering ashes are marked with tablets 
of stone, and beautiful flowers are yearly placed over them, 
here we may find some article belonging to them personally 
while in service — swords, guns, clothing, letters and a 
thousand and one other mementoes that have been hallowed 
by them while living — and now, when these veterans are 
silent, as soon they all will be, our children and children's 
children can see and feel these personal trophies of their 
heroic ancestors. 

I know I but voice the feelings of that once large number, 
now so small and rapidly diminishing, when I thank this 
Historical Society and the donor of these fine rooms for the 
opportunity of placing herein those memorabilia which we 
carried to the front, and are so much attached to as being a 
part of our marches, our battles and our daily lives, as a 
permanent record of Litchfield's valor and devotion to the 
Union. 



—19— 

The expression "The Sword of Bunker Hill" is only a 
type, though a pleasanter and higher sounding name which 
includes knives, forks, buttons, cups, letters and a host of 
articles identified and interwoven in the soldier's life. The 
phrase is more poetical but the sentiment is the same. 

The time is fast approaching when that great struggle 
that placed more than half a million of brave men in 
patriots' graves will be but a dim page of history. It is so 
now to many of our children, and they only realize what it 
means when they see the gray-haired veteran tottering 
along and hear him tell the tales of strife. But as they pass 
through these rooms and gaze upon these emblems it will 
be a vivid illustration of the dangers we underwent, and will 
tell them the living story not only of those early days when 
bleeding feet of patriots stained the snows of Valley Forge, 
but of those later days when starvation was meted out to the 
men equally brave in the dreadful prison pens, and the 
assassin's bullet struck down the nation's President. Such 
are the lessons our Society has shown, is furnishing, and 
will continue to furnish, I trust, for all future generations. 

The work so feebly done by our predecessors has now 
grown stronger and fuller. May its course be ever onward 
and lasting, and may those coming after us ever bless the 
loving and noble hand which has so well provided for us. 

The closing address of the morning was by Dr. F. W. 
Peck, President of the Scientific Association, who spoke 
as follows : 

In the summer of 1902 it was proposed to organize a 
Scientific Association, the principal intention being to have 
monthly meetings for the discussion of scientific subjects. 
During the second month of our existence as an Association 
a friend of the enterprise suggested that we begin to collect 
specimens for a museum of the natural history of Litchfield 



20 

County. In order to increase our interest he offered to pay 
the necessary expenses in having one specimen of each kind 
of bird or animal in the County properly mounted, provided 
we would secure the specimens. At that time the Associa- 
tion organized various sections to take up the collecting in 
the various branches of natural science. The principal 
sections in this line are zoology, botany, mineralogy, den- 
drology and entomology. In these lines a good beginning 
has been made. Little has been done in icthyology, but we 
hope soon to have a good representation in that line in our 
museum. 

With the gathering of these specimens has come the 
problem of where they could be kept for safety and exhibi- 
tion. We were advised that the only way of securing such 
room was to have a collection of such value as to make the 
room a necessity. Now, by the kindness of another friend, 
we are provided with a room well adapted for our purposes. 

From the beginning the interest in the Association has 
been unexpectedly great. We thought to have a small Asso- 
ciation for discussion of scientific subjects. At our last 
annual meeting the membership was reported at one hun- 
dred and sixty. For some reason not foreseen by the origi- 
nators, the Association seems to have fitted into an 
unoccupied corner. Years ago the donor of this building 
had an ideal. She desired to see in Litchfield a building in 
which there should be, beside the library, a department for 
the preservation of historical relics, also one devoted to a 
museum of natural sciences. It is an experience that has 
seldom fallen to my lot to have an enterprise, started in 
such a small way with no expectation of great permanence, 
to have this enterprise developed by one friend into one of 
definite permanent value, and then to find that our existence 
had been anticipated in the plans of another. 

At present our Association finds itself as having come 
into being almost by accident, developed into usefulness by 
one friend, housed and helped on our way by another. 



21 

It may be that the work of these Associations and the 
presence of this building may be details in some unsuspected 
plans that a kind Providence, who watches over the welfare 
of all men, may have for the future good of our own town 
of Litchfield. 

Following Dr. Peck's address, Capt. Edgar B. Van 
Winkle, who is not only the Treasurer but a mainstay of the 
Historical Society and who was indefatigable in his efforts 
to make Friday's affair the success it was, read a number of 
letters of regret from distinguished people, including His 
Excellency, Rollin S. Woodruff, the Presidents of the New 
Hampshire and Rhode Island Historical Societies, Edmund 
Clarence Stedman, the poet-banker, and the venerable John 
Bigelow, ex-Minister to France. In the course of his letter 
Mr. Stedman said: 

"Litchfield County and the breeze-swept walks, the elm- 
fringed Green, and the ancient homes of Litchfield town are 
endeared to me by many memories. I should love, but am 
unable, to hear the legends and associations so familiar to 
me in youth, rehearsed again upon the occasion to which 
you hospitably invite me. 

"There was a time, now a century old, when our little 
State of Connecticut was foremost in the beginnings of 
American literature. Its poets and satirists represented our 
post-Revolutionary wit and imagination, and it was their 
wont often to refresh their souls and bodies in the 'mountain 
county' of their State. Law and statesmanship have no less 
radiated from old Litchfield — nor can I think of any other 
typical New England town from which they have been more 
effectively diffused throughout the land. Certainly no 
Association has a more rational 'excuse for being' than 
yours, which now enters so auspiciously upon a new half 
century." 



22 

We greatly regret that we have only time and space to 
give the following extracts from Mr. Bigelow's letter : 

"I presume I am indebted to you for an invitation to 
attend the semi-centennial anniversary of the Litchfield 
Historical Society's birthday on the fifth of July next. I 
need hardly assign all the reasons why a young gentleman 
of my tender years, who in a few months will cross the 
ninety-first parallel of longevity, may be constrained to deny 
himself the pleasure he would have in accepting the invita- 
tion. That, however, is no reason why I should not allow 
myself to dwell for a few moments in my library upon 
another anniversary in which I helped to celebrate the 
centennial birthday of Litchfield County, and that too some 
years before your Historical Society had been brought to 
the birth. * * * 

"I forget the orator of that anniversary, but I remember 
hearing with intense pleasure and interest a poem delivered 
by John Pierpont. * * * 

"Litchfield has always been associated in my memory with 
two other circumstances of a very agreeable nature. First, 
that it was the country home of your father and his family, 
to whose office door I first affixed the words, 'John Bigelow, 
Attorney at Law.' 

"And the other was that Litchfield was the seat of the 
only law school I believe in the country for nearly a hundred 
years. Had I known of the existence of such a school 
when I graduated from college, it is not very likely that I 
would have abandoned the profession for that of journalism, 
as I subsequently did." 

Friday morning the men held forth, but after twelve 
o'clock they gave way to the women, for the afternoon 
exercises were under the auspices of Mary Floyd Tall- 
madge Chapter, D. A. R., and there was a large gathering 



—23— 

of "Daughters" from all over the State. These included 
regents and representatives from the following Chapters. 
Fanny Ledyard, Mystic; Sarah Ludlow, Seymour; Green 
Woods, Winsted ; Dorothy Ripley, Southport ; Ruth Hart 
and Susan Carrington, Meriden; Melicent Porter, Water- 
bury; Nathan Hale Memorial, East Haddam; Stamford; 
Ansonia ; Katharine Gaylord, Bristol ; Mary Clap Wooster, 
Xew Haven ; Wadsworth, Middletown ; Hannah Woodruff, 
Southington ; Whiting Trumbull, Watertown ; Judea, Wash- 
ington and Torrington. Including the speakers, especially 
invited guests and others, the number who came from out 
of town for the exercises of the entire day was at least 150. 

At one o'clock a most bountiful and delicious luncheon 
was given the speakers of the day and 150 out-of-town 
guests by the local Chapter at the Litchfield Club House. 
The large hall and the tables were most tastefully decorated 
with roses and laurel. The service was perfect and the 
viands so tempting that all the guests were most lavish in 
their praise of the generous hospitality of the members of 
Mary Floyd Tallmadge Chapter, the special committee in 
charge and its very efficient Chairman, Mrs. S. A. W r illis. 

At three o'clock came the exercises in the Historical 
Society's new building and the unveiling of the D. A. R. 
window. The Regent of the Chapter, Airs. John L. Buel, 
presided and introduced the speakers in a very felicitous 
manner. The following young ladies, all members of the 
Chapter, acted as ushers : Miss Margaret Beckwith, Miss 
Carolyn Cowles, Miss Anna Doyle, Miss Bessie Kenny, Miss 
Gertrude Sanford and Miss Harriet Bulkley. Miss Edith 
Mason was page to the Regent. 

After the invocation by Rev. John Hutchins, pastor of the 
Congregational church, and singing "God of Our Fathers, 
Whose Almighty Hand" by the audience, led by the Chapter 
chorus, the following programme was carried out : 



—24— 

In introducing Mrs. Kinney, State Regent of the D. A. R., 
whose subject was "The Mission of the Connecticut 
D. A. R.," Mrs. Buel spoke as follows : 

To hold in sacred remembrance our patriot dead, the 
founders of our country, to educate the youth of to-day, both 
native and foreign born, in the rights, the privileges and the 
duties of American citizenship ; to cherish and safeguard, as 
far as women can, the institutions of our American freedom 
bequeathed to us by our forefathers and foremothers, — 
these are the aims of the National Society of the Daughters 
of the American Revolution. In these patriotic purposes 
the Connecticut Daughters stand among the foremost. 
That this is so, is due to united, earnest effort under the 
leader whom it is an honor and a privilege to have with us 
to-day. Year after year, for thirteen consecutive years, 
4,000 Connecticut Daughters have unanimously called her 
to the highest office in their gift, the State Regency of Con- 
necticut. They have honored themselves in so doing, and 
they have honored the State. Under her distinguished lead- 
ership they have done historical, genealogical and educa- 
tional work of lasting value to this and future generations. 
She it is who has awakened them to the mission underlying 
the aims of our Society — a mission which should be 
cherished in the hearts of every American man and woman 
of Revolutionary descent. To-day, when the local Chapter 
of the Daughters of the American Revolution, which I have 
the honor to represent, has fulfilled the mission that lay 
nearest to their hands, and has called this company together 
to pay grateful tribute to the memory of nearly 3,000 
Litchfield County Revolutionary patriots, it is peculiarly 
fitting that she who is the fountain head of our energies 
should tell us more particularly of the mission of the Con- 
necticut Daughters of which to-day's sacred duty forms a 
part. I have the privilege and the pleasure of presenting 
our loved and honored Regent of Connecticut, Mrs. Kinney. 



Mrs. Kinney spoke as follows: 

From the standpoint of a State Regent, and presumably 
from that of every Daughter of the American Revolution 
within her jurisdiction, the mission of the great national 
organization which we have the honor to represent is not 
only apparent, but it is significant and illuminating as well. 

Nevertheless, it may be that here and there a wayfaring 
sister or brother is unaware of the lines along which Daugh- 
ters of the American Revolution are fulfilling their 
unwritten pledge to perpetuate the memory of the spirit of 
the men and women who achieved American independence, 
and in response to the request of the Regent of the enter- 
taining Chapter I am happy to say a word or two, not only 
by way of emphasizing the fact that our organization has a 
definite mission to perform, but also to indicate the practical 
service which is being rendered to State and Nation by 
Daughters of the American Revolution. 

The National Society D. A. R. is the largest patriotic- 
hereditary organization in the world. It has a membership 
of about 60,000, of which number something over 4,000 
are credited to our own little commonwealth. Its member- 
ship may be found in every State and Territory of 
the Union — in the Hawaiian Islands — in the Philippine 
Islands — in England, France, Italy, Germany — and even in 
far-away India. In a very real sense the organization is a 
branch of the historical and educational department of the 
United States Government, since the charter which was 
granted by the Congress of the United States obliges us to 
report our work each year to that same legislative body, and 
this report is printed and distributed by order of Congress 
precisely as other government reports are printed and dis- 
tributed. Whatever may be the ultimate destiny of the 
organization, the record of its historical, commemorative, 
patriotic and educational work has to-day, and for all time to 
come will have, a distinct and honorable place in the 
archives of the United States. 



—26— 

The growth of the organization in Connecticut has been 
phenomenal; the record of its achievements is equally sur- 
prising. From the first, the Connecticut D. A. R. have 
recognized the dignity and value of their mission, and have 
fulfilled its obligations in a thoughtful and conscientious 
manner. 

They have not allowed the social side of Chapter life to 
take precedence of their self-imposed duties. They believe 
their mission to be a vital one, and that the objects and 
aims of the Society touch upon the eternal verities, since 
they concern the highest and best interests of "Home and 
Country." They believe that they are putting new life into 
the dry and crumbling bones of a dead and almost forgotten 
past, and that they are making history which should be a 
help and inspiration to generations to come. 

There is another side to this question of which we hear 
little, but it is a side not to be forgotten when summing up 
the good which has resulted from the organization of this 
Society. I refer to the benefits accruing directly to the 
Daughters themselves from the esprit de corps which has 
been cultivated among us, from the spirit of comradeship 
and good-fellowship which exists among us to-day, and 
from the sweet and gracious friendships which have come 
to so many of us through the pleasant medium of happy 
Chapter life and Chapter work. These are among the help- 
ful and healthful features of our organization and should be 
listed as one of our valuable, as well as valued, assets. 

I am occasionally asked by the wayfaring sister or brother 
to w T hom I referred a moment or so ago, if Daughters of the 
American Revolution do anything except wave flags and 
glorify their ancestors. In other words, they wish to know 
if there are results to show for the time, energy and money 
we are putting into this movement. 

The reply would necessarily occupy more time than the 
average listener is willing to give to any subject. Among 



—27— 

other things it would include a history in detail of the kind 
of commemorative work the Mary Floyd Tallmadge Chapter 
has been doing. I refer to the fact that we have starred the 
State of Connecticut with wayside stones, tablets, memorial 
gateways, fountains, etc., nearly sixty such memorials to 
mark historic sites, or in memory of the heroes of the Revo- 
lution and what they represented. It would include the 
details of the restoration of many Colonial and Revolu- 
tionary burial places, and the saving to the commonwealth 
of much of its early history through the copying and pre- 
servation of fast fading and crumbling church and town 
records. It would include the story of our efforts to culti- 
vate a spirit of patriotism which need not depend for its 
inspiration upon flag- waving, fireworks and the booming 
of cannon. 

It would include the resume of a far-reaching movement 
for the intellectual and moral training of the destitute 
children of the State and Nation — children of both native 
and foreign birth. It would touch upon our effort for the 
social and political education of adult foreigners — all of 
which make for peace and righteousness and good citizen- 
ship. In addition to their purely historical and com- 
memorative work, the D. A. R. have undertaken to grapple 
with certain hydra-headed sociological problems, and they 
are doing it with the same vigor and earnestness of purpose 
that was manifest in the methods of their forefathers. 
"Blood will tell" — and if any one thing is more obvious than 
another, it is that the blood of Daughters of the American 
Revolution has not been wholly depleted of its inherited 
proportion of iron and fire. I could easily fill the hours of 
this afternoon with merely brief mention of the achieve- 
ments of the Connecticut Daughters only — but even then 
the real significance of these achievements would still remain 
untold. Judged by their fruits, I do not feel that I over- 
state, or in any way misrepresent the attitude of the Con- 



—28— 

necticut Daughters of the American Revolution, when I 
claim that in all their work for "Home and Country" they 
have been and are actuated by principles closely allied to 
those which influenced their forefathers and foremothers in 
Colonial and Revolutionary days ; and if it were possible for 
them to do so, we believe those ancestors would set the 
seal of their approval upon the great patriotic movement 
which is even now attracting world-wide attention — a move- 
ment which is largely due to the women of our generation 
and which is sweeping like a tidal wave over our native land, 
rousing the masses and crystallizing patriotic sentiment and 
noble impulses into well-defined and forceful efforts to lift 
this dear land of ours up, and out of, and beyond the reach 
of the national and municipal degradation which sometimes 
threatens to overwhelm it, and to swing it far aloft and back 
again upon the high and broad tableland of political integrity 
upon which our forefathers founded this republic, and 
where they entered into solemn compact to give to the world 
a pure and honest government, of the people, by the people 
and for the people — and sealed this compact with their 
precious blood. The motto of our organization is "For 
Home and Country." The Society stands for ideals. It 
stands for a lofty standard of social, political and personal 
ethics. It stands for loyalty to the flag that floats over us, 
and for a country with a conscience. To save the warp and 
woof of the Nation's history as bequeathed to us by our 
ancestors, and to inculcate the principles of a Christian 
patriotism in the hearts of the people, is a part of our mis- 
sion. To do our full share toward making the world a little 
brighter, a little better, and a good deal more patriotic than 
we sometimes have reason to believe it is, is also a part of 
our mission. But, after the manner of women, we must do 
our work in our own fashion. We may not go into the 
legislative halls on Capitol Hill in Washington and cast votes 
for this, that or the other helpful measure for the good of 



—29— 

mankind, but we may and are bringing strong educational 
and moral influences to bear upon our dangerously large 
foreign population, with the hope of making good American 
citizens and worthy patriots out of possible foes, who may, 
even now, be shielding themselves in the folds of Old Glory 
while they strike at the laws of the land, and attempt to 
belittle the value and strength of a nation's loyalty to its 
flag. We may not go into the pulpit and preach our creeds 
to a little coterie of men and women whose beliefs are the 
same as our own, but we may, and do, carve our sermons 
upon stone, or mould in bronze our bits of local history, and 
set them up by the wayside where they may be read by men 
and women of all creeds or no creed at all; or we may 
follow the example of the Mary Floyd Tallmadge Chapter 
and in noble symbolic form and splendid color give outward 
expression to the faith that is in us, that our ancestors 
represented the highest type of manhood, that the principles 
for which they fought were the foundation stones for the 
highest and best form of self-government, and that their 
sacrifice embodied the acme of human suffering, of heroism, 
of personal effacement, for the sake of what, to them, 
was a sacred cause. 

Were the men whose memory the Daughters of the 
American Revolution are honoring to-day actuated by 
motives of personal aggrandizement when they turned their 
faces from home and loved ones and gave themselves over 
to the horrors of war? Not one of them. They may not 
have been conscious of it, but every one of them, even the 
humblest, was prompted to the step by his own sense of 
duty, by what seemed to him right and best for Home and 
Country, rather than by what might be pleasant or profitable 
for himself. Not in so many words did they say it, but in 
their lives and deaths there is ample proof of their eager- 
ness to dare to do and to die for the cause of civil and 
religious liberty. 



— 3°— 

" Of what avail the plow or sail, 
Or land or life, — if freedom fail?" 

In placing this beautiful and significant memorial 
to the memory of Litchfield County's Revolutionary 
Soldiers, the patriotic women of the Mary Floyd Tall- 
madge Chapter have honored not only their ancestors, 
but themselves and the State of Connecticut as well. They 
have set up in this goodly place a fadeless vision, symboliz- 
ing the glory and beauty of faithful doing and noble self- 
sacrifice. This splendid page out of the history of our State 
should be, and will be, an object lesson to this and to future 
generations and a sufficient answer as well to those who 
stand outside the fold and wonder what the Daughters of 
the American Revolution have been and are doing. 

I bring to you, Madam Regent, and to the Chapter which 
you have the honor to represent, the felicitations of Sister 
Chapters throughout the State, upon the completion of the 
historical and commemorative work which has engaged 
your attention for the past two years. We are proud of it, 
and of the Chapter which has so worthily discharged a 
share of the debt of gratitude which we all owe to those who 
fought to make us a nation. 

After all, it is the women who give much of the tone and 
color to the sentiment of a people and through home and 
social influences wield a quiet but pervading force in public 
affairs. In devotion to the principles which actuated the 
makers of this mighty nation, in love of country, in loyalty 
to the flag, in wise and legitimate effort for municipal 
reform, in a vigorous stand for the preservation of Ameri- 
can customs and the permanency of the American Sabbath, 
we may, if we will, be supreme. 

If a patriotic and ethical renaissance should receive its 
impetus through our loyal efforts for Home and Country, 
then will Daughters of the American Revolution know that 



—3i— 

they have not failed either in their duty to the past or their 
obligations to the future. 

The next speaker, Miss Clara Lee Bowman, spoke on 
"Ideals of the National Society, D. A. R.," and was 
introduced as follows : 

Among the twenty Vice Presidents-General of the 
National Society, D. A. R., Connecticut has several times 
been represented by one of her distinguished Daughters. 
To receive proof of the confidence of 50,000 women repre- 
senting every State in the Union, is a distinction not to be 
despised. 

Not the least honored among those who have held this 
high office in the gift of the National Society is she who is 
to speak to us to-day of its ideals of service to "Home and 
Country.'' In her person the National Society to-day pays 
tribute to the memory of our Revolutionary patriots of 
Litchfield County. It is fitting that not only Connecticut, 
through our loved State Regent, but that the National 
Society as well should share in this grateful commemoration 
of the patriotism of our Litchfield County men in their 
struggle for national independence. Therefore it is with 
great satisfaction that I present to you this very dear and 
honored guest amongst us — one who is loved in Connecticut 
and whose name is held in high esteem wherever it is 
spoken — Miss Clara Bowman, Vice President-General for 
Connecticut of the National Society, D. A. R. 

Miss Bowman spoke as follows : 

It gives me great pleasure to bring to you greetings ami 
congratulations from the National Board of the Society of 
the Daughters of the American Revolution. Congratula- 
tions especially that the Mary Floyd Tallmadge Chapter has 



—32— 

given to us such a perfect illustration of the aims and ideals 
of that Society, in this beautiful memorial which we all 
delight to honor, and in whose honor we are gathered 
together to-day. 

Memory and reverence for the past, beauty and joy for 
the present, example and inspiration for the future — are 
they not all united in the varied colors, the symbolic figures, 
the grace and dignity of form and outline which combine to 
make this memorial window tell its story to the children of 
to-day, who are to be the citizens of the future? A story 
which will keep alive in the hearts of men the good name 
and great deeds of those heroes of old, who by serving their 
day and generation gave to us a nation, and to whom we 
owe a never to be forgotten debt of gratitude. 

But for the efforts of this Chapter many of those 3,000 
Revolutionary soldiers of Litchfield County would have 
slept in unmarked and forgotten graves. Now their monu- 
ment beautifies and adorns their early home and their 
memory is kept green among us. 

Sixteen years ago, when our Society was first started, a 
spirit of iconoclasm had swept over the land, vandalism was 
abroad, the tide of prosperity was gaining in strength every 
day and sweeping before it, not only old landmarks, but all 
sentiment regarding them. Old homesteads were being torn 
down, old records lost sight of, the priceless contents of 
grandmothers' attics with letters and journals of past 
generations were being turned over to the ubiquitous rag- 
man ; a flood of immigration threatened to submerge us ; a 
generation had arisen who knew not Joseph and who were 
only concerned with the fleshpots of Egypt. 

Then it was that our ancestral Societies were born. As 
has always been the case in the world's history, the need 
brought the man ; this time it was both man and woman — for 
we yield precedence to the Sons of the American Revolu- 
tion — and their example was closely followed by that small 



—33— 

body of earnest women in the city of Washington who in 
1891 formed the National Society of the Daughters of the 
American Revolution, with little idea of its far-reaching 
effects. To concentrate the pure stream of patriotism which 
is our natural birthright, "to perpetuate the memory and 
spirit of the men and women who achieved American inde- 
pendence, by the acquisition of historical spots and the 
erection of monuments, by the preservation of documents 
and relics and of the records of individual services of 
Revolutionary soldiers and patriots, and by the promotion 
of celebrations of all patriotic anniversaries." 

These were the first ideals for which our Society was 
founded, but we have hitched our wagon to a star which 
rises higher and higher on our horizon. The spirit of our 
organization has flashed like a signal fire from State to 
State. Its members are hard at work in every State in the 
Union, in the islands of the sea and in foreign lands. 

In our first ten years of action we strove to erect monu- 
ments on every hillside where the glory of history has set 
its mark. New England is dotted with our landmarks until 
it almost seems as if the supply of historical sites would 
become exhausted. The Western States envy us our many 
opportunities of service. It would take hours, instead of 
the few moments alloted me, to tell half the tale of the 
carrying out of our ideals. Connecticut alone has spent 
$125,000 in this work. We have reclaimed old ceme- 
teries in many towns beside Hartford, and can but feel that 
in the line of erecting memorials our mission is almost 
accomplished. All this gratifies our sentiment of loyalty 
to the past, but of late years our conscience has been aroused 
to a sense of our active duty to the present. 

This grand, splendidly organized body of earnest women 
is equipped and ready to enter into the great social problems 
that are facing our generation. 'Tis a case of noblesse 
oblige, and we could not escape from it if we would. Our 



—34— 

ideals have become flesh and blood, — they have assumed 
gigantic proportions. We see visions and dream dreams, 
with the great problem of immigration in view, patriotic 
education committees have been appointed by both National 
and State Societies. It is our dream that every State and 
Chapter shall have a hard-working committee to study and 
meet the needs of the foreigner in their midst, who has come 
to live among them as an American citizen. If each Chap- 
ter would enter into settlement work for their own locality, 
think what a transformation we might bring about for our 
own generation! Much is being done on those lines by 
Connecticut Daughters, as Mrs. Kinney has told us. Massa- 
chusetts, Ohio, Rhode Island, New Jersey and New York 
also have active committees at work. 

Another line of service which appeals to us especially is 
the education of the descendants of Revolutionary soldiers, 
shut in for generations by the fastnesses of the great Smoky 
Mountains, until they are as far behind the life of to-day as 
if they were indeed in the generation of the War of Inde- 
pendence, when their fathers fought shoulder to shoulder 
with the best men and patriots any of us can boast in our 
ancestry. 

It is another of our dreams that every Chapter in the 
country shall educate a mountain girl in some of the South- 
ern colleges, that they may go out among their own people 
as our representatives. What better memorial can we erect 
than to build into the characters of these young people a 
sense of devotion to country and to home, and offer them 
to our generation as worthy citizens of the future? 

With every decade, in fact with every year, new ideals 
rise before us. We are earnest women, anxious to do our 
share of the world's work and to leave our beloved country 
better than it might have been without our effort. We 
aspire to be vestal virgins of patriotism, loyalty and service. 



—35— 

If our ideals are far beyond our accomplishment, "if we 
have built castles in the air," our work need not be lost; 
that is where they should be. Now let us put foundations 
under them. 

In introducing Mr. Ellsworth, who spoke on "Litchfield 
County in the Revolution," Mrs. Buel said : 

Four years ago the descendants of Connecticut's great 
patriot and statesman, Chief Justice Oliver Ellsworth, pre- 
sented to the Connecticut Daughters of the American 
Revolution the homestead at Windsor of their illustrious 
ancestor, to have and to hold forever. The day of presenta- 
tion was an eventful day for the Connecticut Daughters, 
and for the State as well. It gave us our Connecticut 
Mount Vernon. On that day, he whose name now honors 
our programme was the spokesman of those generous de- 
scendants whose deed of gift to the Connecticut D. A. R. was 
the first deed taken out on their patrimony since its con- 
veyance to the first Ellsworth in 1665. It is superfluous to 
introduce to this audience one so well known in the ranks of 
historians and literary men as this descendant of Oliver and 
Abigail Wolcott Ellsworth, who is to speak to us to-day 
about our own County (which is also his County) in the 
Revolution. It is also superfluous to say that in the hearts 
of the Connecticut Daughters of the American Revolution 
the illustrious name he bears will ever hold a warm and con- 
spicuous place. I have the very great honor to introduce 
Mr. William Webster Ellsworth of the Century Company. 

Mr. Ellswori 11, in response, spoke as follows: 

Madam Regent, and you Chief Daughters of our State, 
Ladies and Gentlemen: — In the year 1774, eleven months 
before the first gun was fired at Lexington, the King's 
representative in the Province of Massachusetts Bay sailed 



-36- 

for England on a much needed vacation. The passage of 
the Boston Port Bill and other equally obnoxious acts had 
given Govenor Hutchinson some strenuous days. Imme- 
diately on his arrival in England he held a long conversa- 
tion with King George regarding the rebellious colonists 
over sea. His Majesty, having sounded to its depths the 
perfidy of his Massachusetts subjects, passed on to Rhode 
Island, whose government, he learned, was "nearest to a 
democracy of all the colonies." "How is it with Connecti- 
cut ? Are they much better ?" asked the King. "The con- 
stitutions, sir, are the same," replied the Governor, "but 
Connecticut are a more cautious people; strive to make as 
little noise as may be, and have, in general, retained a good 
share of that virtue which is particularly necessary in such a 
form of government." 

It was to the foolish and mistaken policy of this same 
King that the American Revolution was due. Lecky, the 
English historian, says of one of the acts of George III 
against the Americans, that it was as criminal as any of 
those that led Charles I to the scaffold. "His hiring Ger- 
man mercenaries to subdue the essentially English popula- 
tion beyond the Atlantic," says Lecky, "made reconciliation 
hopeless and the Declaration of Independence inevitable." 

If the King could have looked forward for a little 
more than two years from the day of his interview with 
Governor Hutchinson, he would have seen the leaden statue 
of himself, which had been set up with great pomp and 
circumstance in the Bowling Green, in the city of New 
York, tipped from its pedestal by the Sons of Liberty and, 
later, borne in pieces to a little hill-town in northwestern 
Connecticut, where the ladies of the Wolcott family and 
their friends organized what might be called a bullet-bee, 
and from His Majesty's counterfeit presentment made up 
some 42,000 cartridges for use against His Majesty's 
soldiers. 



—37— 

That little town in Connecticut was the county seat of an 
energetic people, engaged as we are to-day in tilling the 
granite rocks of the Berkshires. It had been named from 
a cathedral city in the motherland. In the years just before 
the outbreak of the Revolution, Major Andre, whose death 
was one of the most grievous incidents of the war, was a fre- 
quent visitor to the English Lichfield. There lived Anna 
Seward, his friend and later eulogist, and in the literary cir- 
cle of the town was Dr. Erasmus Darwin, author of 'The 
Botanic Garden" and other works of prose and poetry, and 
grandfather of the great naturalist; there, too, lived Thomas 
Day, who wrote "Sanford and Merton" ; and the Edgeworth 
family — Maria was then a little girl. There, with the 
Sewards, Honora Sneyd made her home — the girl with 
whom Andre fell in love and whose picture was the only one 
of his possessions he was able to retain at the time of his 
first capture by the Americans, and, in that capture, which 
occurred in the early months of the Revolution at Fort 
Chamblis on Lake Champlain, Litchfield County troops, on 
duty in the district, were undoubtedly concerned. Andre, 
in one of his letters home, referred to "the dear Lichfield- 
ians," but it was not the people of our Litchfield he had in 
mind. 

As there is some question how the letter "t" got into the 
American Litchfield when the English town of the same 
name is spelled without it, I may say, in passing, that a high 
authority in etymology — perhaps the highest in America — 
in response to an inquiry, tells me that in the seventeenth 
century, and doubtless in the beginning of the eighteenth, 
when our American Litchfield was founded, the name of the 
English town which, in earlier years, had been spelled in 
several different ways, was oftener written with a "t" than 
without it, and he assures me that this is more correct, 
according to the rules and analogies of English spelling, 
than its present form as now used in England. 



- 3 8- 

I have been asked to speak of Litchfield County in the 
Revolution. Reading over the roster of those who fought 
in that great struggle for freedom is like reading the tax- 
lists of the towns to-day, and it would seem as if every 
woman whose family has lived in Litchfield County for a 
hundred and fifty years needs only to be alive to be eligible 
for membership in the Daughters of the American Revolu- 
tion. 

And what part did our County take in the contest? We 
find her represented in every campaign, in nearly every 
battle, and sons of Litchfield taking high honors throughout 
the war. She sent 3,000 men to share the privations of 
winter camps and the perils of the battlefield — about two- 
thirds of her male population between the ages of sixteen 
and fifty — and there were times when not a man or boy over 
fourteen years of age was left in some of her villages. No 
State sent more men than Connecticut in proportion to 
population — no State but Massachusetts sent more in actual 
numbers. 

When the sound of the shot "heard round the world" 
reached Litchfield County, ninety men from New Hartford 
started at once to join "the embattled farmers" at Lexing- 
ton and Concord. Norfolk sent a little band of twenty- 
four. W T ithin a week General Gage found himself besieged 
in Boston by a motley army of 16,000 sturdy farmers 
gathered from all over New England. Benedict Arnold, 
commanding the best equipped company on the ground, the 
Governor's Foot Guard of New Haven, suggested the 
importance of capturing the forts at Ticonderoga and 
Crown Point. But his suggestion had been forestalled by 
another Connecticut man, and Ethan Allen, born on Litch- 
field Hill, was already marching toward Lake Champlain. 
His little company, which grew in members as it advanced, 
began with a nucleus of sixteen men, of whom four at least 
were from the same County as its leader, and when Arnold 



—39— 

arrived with a commission from the Cambridge Council of 
Safety he found Allen with a commission from the Legisla- 
ture of Connecticut, and, what was more important, the men 
to fight. They refused to serve under any other com- 
mander, so Arnold was forced to take the position of a 
volunteer under Allen. This was the first of a long series 
of disappointments and thwarted ambitions which ended 
finally in the treason. 

At Ticonderoga, on the tenth of May, 1775, "in the name 
of the great Jehovah and the Continental Congress," the 
first captured British battle-flag of the Revolution fell into 
the hands of a Litchfield County man. And entering the 
fort at Ethan Allen's side was Lieutenant Crampton, also a 
native of Litchfield. The next day Colonel Seth Warner 
of Roxbury, in the same County, took Crown Point. 

The First Connecticut Regiment, one of whose companies 
was made up largely of Litchfield County men, was sent 
to the Lake Champlain region, where it assisted in the 
reduction of St. Johns and then went on to Montreal. The 
Fourth Connecticut Regiment, under Colonel Hinman of 
Woodbury, recruited in Litchfield County, helped to guard 
Ticonderoga and Crown Point and took part in all the work 
of that district from June to December, 1775. Later, the 
regiment of Colonel Charles Burrall of Canaan, its men all 
from Litchfield County, went still further north and rein- 
forced the troops besieging Quebec under Wooster and 
Arnold. And here they must have met the Connecticut 
company which formed one of Arnold's brave body of 1,100 
men who had pushed their way through the wilds of Maine, 
over craggy precipices and morasses, through drifts of 
snow and icy streams, eating their dogs and boiling their 
moccasins for sustenance. Among them, serving as a 
private soldier, was Aaron Burr, who was visiting in Litch- 
field on the outbreak of the Revolution. 



—40— 

For Litchfield County men had gone to the east as well 
as to the west and north ; many of them fought at Bunker 
Hill with the troops of the Second and Third Connecticut 
Regiments, and it was from the army gathered around 
Boston, after Bunker Hill, that Arnold's expedition to 
Quebec was recruited. The Seventh Connecticut, with a 
Litchfield County company, took part in the siege of Boston 
and was in General Sullivan's Division on Winter Hill. 

It was here that Washington's troubles over the short 
enlistments began. "It is not in the page of history," wrote 
Washington, "to furnish a case like ours; to maintain a 
post within musket-shot of the enemy without powder, and 
at the same time to disband an army and recruit another 
within that distance of twenty odd British regiments." The 
French and Indian w r ars had been conducted with Arcadian 
simplicity, and it had been customary to cease fighting in 
the winter and go home to feed the stock. And it was not 
an easy task to keep these liberty-loving youths in hand 
during the months of idle encampment. 

Upon Howe's departure, the little American army was 
marched to New York. Six battalions were raised in Con- 
necticut, among them two companies from Litchfield 
County, and these joined the forces on Manhattan Island 
which were awaiting the coming of Howe's army from 
Halifax. 

In August, 1776, Howe landed with 25,000 well-trained 
soldiers. Then, in quick succession came the battles of 
Long Island, Harlem Heights and White Plains, and in 
November the attack on Fort Washington. To the defense 
of Fort Washington went thirty-six picked men from Litch- 
field, under the command of Captain Beebe, a Litchfield 
patriot who was in active service throughout the war. The 
garrison of the fort, under Colonel Magraw, was forced to 
capitulate. You know of the cruel massacre watched by 
Washington, in tears, from Fort Lee, across the Hudson, 



—4i— 

and of the sufferings of the unfortunate prisoners. Crowded 
into the Sugar House in New York and in the prison-ships 
of the harbor, without water and for the first two days with- 
out food, sickness and death came upon them and few 
survived the ordeal. Only six of Captain Beebe's little band 
of thirty-six lived to breathe again the air of Litchfield Hill. 

After the fall of Fort Washington and the capture of the 
flower of the American army, the remainder under Wash- 
ington escaped across New Jersey and over beyond the 
Delaware. The British pursued, but rested at Princeton 
and Trenton, while Cornwallis and Howe returned to New 
York for their Christmas plum pudding. Then came the 
historic crossing of the Delaware — on Christmas night of 
1776, in a blizzard of sleet and snow, with the river full of 
floating ice. Fiske considers this the most critical point in 
the career of the American leader, for the terms of service 
of the greater part of his men expired on New Year's Day, 
and had not the attack on Trenton been successful it would 
have been almost impossible again to fill the ranks. In the 
little army of only 4,000 men which Washington had with 
him were some from Litchfield County, and in that dark 
hour New England did her duty and sent all the troops she 
could raise to create a diversion in the neighborhood of New 
York. Judge Tapping Reeve, afterward the founder of 
Litchfield's famous law school, whose wife was Aaron 
Burr's only sister, was one of those who went from this 
County and served as an officer until the news of the vic- 
tories of Trenton and Princeton brought assurance that 
Washington's army was safe for a time. 

After a winter at Morristown, Washington moved south- 
ward and met the enemy at Brandywine Creek as they 
advanced from their landing at Chesapeake Bay toward 
the capital, Philadelphia. Defeat — and a fortnight later, at 
Germantown, again defeat. In vain did Major Tallmadge, 
for fifty years after the Revolution a resident of Litchfield, 



—42— 

endeavor to hold the Germantown road with his dragoons. 
In the darkness of a mist, two American columns mistook 
each other for the enemy and there was confusion which 
ended in retreat. Our men were in both these battles, and 
they were also well represented at Bennington and Saratoga, 
fought at the same time by the Northern Army and with 
greater success. Oliver Wolcott was at Saratoga with his 
militia, and Captain Seymour of Litchfield was present at 
the dinner given by the American officers to their captives 
when Burgoyne, called upon for a toast, gave out the grace- 
ful sentiment, "America and Great Britain against the 
world." 

Among the troops at Valley Forge, whither Washington's 
army retired after the defeat at Germantown, ragged, half- 
starved, and with hastily made huts their only protection 
from the winter storms, were many men whose descendants 
are in this audience to-day. Major Tallmadge was 
stationed near, scouring the country between the outposts 
on the Delaware and Schuylkill rivers. In June, when the 
British moved toward New York, Washington caught them 
at Monmouth, and in that battle were several Connecticut 
regiments, among them many men from Litchfield County. 
After Monmouth, the most important battles of the Revo- 
lution were fought in the South, except for Stony Point, 
which the Fifth Connecticut, recruited in Fairfield and 
Litchfield Counties, helped to storm. Even in the Southern 
fields our County was represented, but most of the Connec- 
ticut regiments remained in the North, some of them 
protecting the coasts, others in camp at what was called 
"Connecticut Village," near West Point. It was there that 
the treason of Arnold occurred, Washington passing 
through Litchfield on his way from Hartford two days 
before he learned of the treachery of his trusted friend and 
general. At this time, too, came the mutiny among some of 
the Pennsylvanians, who suffered from lack of food and 



—43— 

decent clothing. Washington immediately sounded the 
officers of other troops as to what might be expected from 
the forces under them. General Parsons, commanding- the 
Connecticut Division, wrote to his chief of various patriotic 
incidents that had come under his observation, saying: "I 
am convinced the fullest confidence may be placed in the 
Connecticut troops." 

When Cornwallis was forced to retreat toward the north, 
after his engagement at Guilford Court House, North 
Carolina, he took a position at Yorktown. LaFayette had 
been sent by Washington against him and he held the 
British in check while the grand coup of the war was 
accomplished. The commander-in-chief, with his army from 
the Highlands of the Hudson, including several Connecticut 
regiments, was making a feint as if to attack Xew York; 
his enemy's weak position on the York peninsula devel- 
oped — the French fleet was investing it on one side — and 
Washington, by a swift movement, marched southward, and, 
on the fourth anniversary of Burgoyne's surrender, our 
Litchfield County men heard the British bands play "The 
World Turned Upside Down," as the army of Cornwallis 
laid down its arms. 

Thus, briefly, I have tried to sketch the part which our 
troops bore in the Revolution — the work of individuals will 
be more fully treated in an address which is to follow. But 
I have said enough, perhaps, to thrill with pride the hearts 
of those who are descended from these patriot sires, and 
more than enough to give the stranger within our gates the 
impression that the War of the Revolution was fought and 
won by Litchfield County heroes. This is an era of peace — 
we hope for it, we pray for peace throughout the world, 
but if ever there was a righteous war it was the War of the 
American Revolution. We were colonists, we had no repre- 
sentation in the councils of the nation that ruled us, we were 
made the victims of odious laws and taxes, we were 



—44— 

struggling for a principle — the equal rights of man, 
announced in the Declaration of Colonial Rights, reiterated 
in the Declaration of Independence, recognized in the 
constitutions of all our States. Many of the best men of 
the mother country were convinced that our cause was 
just. Even the great Pitt withdrew his eldest son from the 
army that he might not be compelled to take up arms 
against those who were defending the common liberties of 
England. 

Let me quote what Abraham Lincoln once said of the 
Revolution. It was in a speech made at Trenton, N. J., on 
his way to the inaugural. There on the banks of the Dela- 
ware, he referred to the famous crossing, to the hardships of 
the soldiers and to the victory of the great commander as he 
had read of it in Weems' "Life of Washington." "I recol- 
lect," he said, "thinking then, boy even though I was, that 
there must have been something more than common that 
these men struggled for. I am exceedingly anxious that 
that thing — that something even more than national inde- 
pendence ; that something that held out a great promise to 
all the people of the world for all time to come — I am 
exceedingly anxious that this Union, the Constitution, and 
the liberties of the people shall be perpetuated in accordance 
with the original idea for which that struggle was made. 
And I shall be most happy indeed if I shall be a humble 
instrument in the hands of the Almighty and of this His 
almost chosen people for perpetuating the object of that 
great struggle." 

And he it was — Abraham Lincoln — a hundred years after 
the Revolution and in the midst of a still mightier conflict, 
he it was who struck off the shackles of the slave and carried 
to its full fruition the doctrine of the equal rights of man- 
kind, for which our Litchfield County fathers fought, 
inheriting their love of liberty from those who cut their way 
through the primeval wilderness to found in freedom the 
Colonies of Connecticut. 



—45— 

In presenting- Mr. Wolcott, Airs. Buel said: 

Just outside of this window stands a tree planted by the 
hands of Oliver Wolcott, one of thirteen set out by him in 
honor of the thirteen struggling- Colonies of the Revolu- 
tion, and each bearing the name of a Colony. All are gone 
save only this and one comrade — old "Connecticut" — on 
South Street. But more immortal than ever these mighty 
trees lives amongst us the memory of the man who planted 
them. Oliver Wolcott, general, governor and signer of the 
Declaration of Independence, stands foremost on our honor- 
roll of Litchfield patriots, and we are fortunate in having 
with us to-day one of his lineal descendants, a son of the 
late Governor Roger Wolcott of Massachusetts. He brings 
fitting tribute to our Revolutionary heroes, not only in his 
own behalf, but also in behalf of all the descendants of 
Litchfield County patriots and other donors who have 
generously assisted this Chapter in erecting this memorial 
in their honor. Connecticut rejoices in the possession of 
two noted Olivers, — Oliver Wolcott and Oliver Ellsworth — 
neither of whom would we give for any other country's 
Roland, and it is a memorable fact that this occasion is 
made distinguished by the presence here of descendants of 
both. The patriots of Litchfield County, to whose self-sacri- 
ficing services this window pays undying tribute, could not 
have worthier eulogist than him whom I now have the 
honor of introducing — Mr. Roger Wolcott, of Boston. 

Mr. Wolcott, in responding, said : 

Madam Regent, hereditary neighbors: — It is a pleasure, 
indeed, to be in Litchfield for my first visit to the home of 
three generations of my ancestors, and it is a privilege that I 
shall not soon forget to be allowed to say a few words to 
you on this most interesting occasion. 

Connecticut played a leading part in the American Revo- 
lution. Her Colonial history is a story of self-restraint, 



- 4 6- 

notably different from that of her more impatient northern 
neighbor. Massachusetts had her Stamp Act riot and her 
Boston massacre; Connecticut had her bloodless preserva- 
tion of the charter and the secret debate in her Assembly on 
the right of Parliament to tax the American Colonies, a 
debate so secret that only the tradition thereof has come 
down to us. The men of Connecticut had always gone their 
way quietly, biding their time — but none the less surely win- 
ning in the end ; and when the time came for an open revolt 
against the oppressions of the mother-country, Connecticut 
showed that no other State could send more of her sons to 
the front, and none could do more to keep the Continental 
Army supplied with food and the munitions of war. Massa- 
chusetts kindled the Revolution, Connecticut kept the 
Revolution aflame. 

In the stirring deeds of the struggle, no County and no 
town had a larger share than Litchfield. Settled a scant 
sixty years before the Declaration of Independence, the 
town was still the home of pioneers. Only within their 
generation had the Indians ceased to be a haunting terror 
at their very thresholds. About 1750 the homesick Mrs. 
Davies wrote to a friend in England, "There is nothing here 
to associate with but Presbyterians and wolves," and bears 
and the fierce catamount menaced themselves and their 
cattle as late as the Revolution. All traffic was by horse- 
back until 1750, when the first wheeled wagon arrived in 
town, and it was during the war that the imprisoned Royal 
Mayor of New York first had a pleasure-carriage brought 
to Litchfield. And perhaps more terrifying to the modern 
mind than any of these things was the Puritan Sabbath. 
The service was in two parts, a morning session with a 
sermon often hours long, scarcely enlivened by the doleful 
psalmody of the day, and another session in the afternoon, 
with a short interim for dinner between the two. Trying 
as this was in the sultry days of summer, it must have been 



—47— 

nothing else but torment in the icy cold of winter, for not 
until long after the Revolution did any Litchfield meeting- 
house possess a stove. The winter cold was for some 
mitigated by the "Sabbath-day house" close by, a house 
built for those who came from a distance and who wished to 
send forward a servant to start a blazing fire, in whose 
welcome glow the family might eat their dinner between 
services and warm themselves before the bleak ride home. 
The men and women who lived in Litchfield in 1775 must 
needs be of dauntless fiber, and so they proved themselves 
in the Revolution. 

In 1774 Oliver Wolcott, as chairman of a Litchfield 
town-meeting, drew up resolutions on the Boston Port Bill, 
and a committee was at once formed to take up subscriptions 
for the assistance of the stricken town. In the same year 
a Committee of Inspection was appointed "to observe the 
conduct of all persons," and to publish the names of Tories 
so that the community might be warned against them. In 
January of 1776 Captain Bezaleel Beebe was ordered to 
raise a company of militia. When the news was known, 
recruits poured in, some coming to his house at a run, for 
fear the ranks should be full before their arrival. In six 
days it was armed and equipped and on its way to the 
defense of New York. In July Oliver Wolcott signed the 
Declaration of Independence at Philadelphia, and in August 
he was appointed a Brigadier General to command the 
regiment of Connecticut militia which were to be hurried to 
the defense of New York. After the British occupation of 
New York the next month, Litchfield at once jumped to a 
new prominence, being an important depot of supplies, 
directly on the line of overland communication between New 
England and the other States. At the age of nineteen. 
Oliver Wolcott, Jr., became a Quartermaster, with the 
tedious task of collecting and forwarding supplies for the 
army. Committees were formed for the purchase of horses, 



- 4 8- 

clothing and equipment, for the inspection of provisions and 
the examination of army surgeons. Bounties were voted 
to the Litchfield soldiers and relief given to their families 
and themselves, when they tottered home, broken by sick- 
ness and wounds and the inhuman brutalities of the British 
prisons. In 1777 Litchfield sent to the front ninety-two 
soldiers as her share of four battalions from the State. 
When the infamous Tryon descended with his Tories on 
the American stores at Danbury, Litchfield sent to meet him 
her last fourteen men capable of bearing arms, among them 
Oliver Wolcott, Jr., then seventeen years old, and Paul Peck. 
This veteran hunter, seventy-five years old, ensconced 
himself behind a stone wall, whence he fired upon the 
retreating marauders. At every shot of his great flint-lock 
a man dropped, until, his little fortress was rushed and his 
brains were beaten out by the exasperated enemy with his 
own clubbed musket. During the first two years of the 
Revolution, many British prisoners of war were detained at 
Litchfield, of whom the most important were William 
Franklin, an illegitimate son of Benjamin Franklin and 
Royal Governor of New Jersey, and David Matthews, the 
Mayor of New York. The following years of the war 
were hard ones for the patriots. The women and the boys 
of Litchfield were sore put to it to harvest their crops and 
to keep their households supplied with the necessities of life. 
Every blanket not in use was sent to the army, and shirts, 
lint and bandages were made in every house. The taxes 
grew heavier as, the war dragged on, being in 1780 at the 
rate of one shilling in the pound. Two years later the town 
in its need of money reversed the ancient Scriptural phrase 
and visited the sins of the children upon the fathers, for 
three inhabitants of Litchfield were "assessed on examination 
agreeable to law for each a son gone to the enemy," although 
after a hearing one of them was released from his assessment. 
To add to their hardships smallpox broke out, brought home 



—49— 

by some of the returning- soldiers, and a number of the people 
took it, although the epidemic subsided without proving fatal 
in any case. In the spring of 1780 George Washington 
wrote from Newburgh to Governor Trumbull of Connecti- 
cut, asking him for supplies for his starving army. By this 
time the States were well-nigh exhausted of all that must 
be had to support troops in the field, and Washington's 
appeal to "Brother Jonathan" was almost a last resort. As 
on every occasion, he did not appeal in vain. Trumbull 
promptly replied, stating that a wagon-train of supplies from 
Hartford and Litchfield would be at Newburgh on a certain 
day at a certain time. When Washington at the appointed 
time and place saw the wagons of Connecticut slowly wind- 
ing into view, he exclaimed, "No other man than Governor 
Trumbull could have procured them, and no other State than 
Connecticut would have furnished them." 

But enough of Revolutionary Litchfield at home. Let us 
turn to the deeds of her men on the firing-line, where we 
find that hardly an important battle of the war was fought, 
north or south, that some son of Litchfield was not there in 
an important place. In 1775 it was Ethan Allen, a native 
of Litchfield, who obtained the surrender of Ticonderoga. 
Crown Point fell to Seth Warner, born in the neighboring 
town of Roxbury. Ephraim Kirby and other Litchfield 
men fought at Bunker Hill, while Captain Archibald McNiel 
and Sergeant Bezaleel Beebe were at the capture of Mont- 
real under the ill-fated Montgomery. In the autumn of 
1776, Bezaleel Beebe, now a Captain commanding a com- 
pany of thirty-six picked men from Litchfield County, was 
part of the garrison of Fort Washington, near New York, 
when it was attacked by the British and surrendered after 
a brave defense. The enlisted men were imprisoned in the 
notorious Sugar House and prison shops. Huddled together 
like rats in a trap, fed on scanty rations of wormy bread 
and stale pork, with brackish water for their only drink, one 



— 5o— 

by one they succumbed to dysentery and the smallpox, and 
but six survived their imprisonment of less than two months. 
At Bennington the Americans were falling back when Seth 
Warner arrived and saved the day. At Brandywine and 
Germantown were Kirby, Tallmadge and Lieutenant James 
Morris, who, at Germantown, led one of the attacking 
columns and later guarded the rear. Colonel Kirby was 
left for dead on the field at Germantown, but was later dis- 
covered and revived. At Saratoga Oliver Wolcott com- 
manded a brigade, and Captain Moses Seymour headed a 
troop of cavalry, while Major Benjamin Tallmadge com- 
manded a detachment of Sheldon's famous dragoons on 
outpost duty during the terrible winter at Valley Forge. 
Kirby and Tallmadge helped turn the tide of victory at Mon- 
mouth, and Morris was again chosen to lead an attacking 
column in Alexander Hamilton's " forlorn hope" at York- 
town. When the unfortunate Andre was captured, it was 
Major Tallmadge whose keen eye penetrated his disguise 
and to whom Andre later admitted his identity. During the 
few days which followed a lively friendship was formed 
between the two, and when the time came for the English- 
man to die, he walked to the gallows escorted by Major Tall- 
madge, who there received his affectionate farewell. 

But my time is nearly gone and this brief recital must 
suffice. I have named only a few of the deeds by which 
immortality has come to those whom we are proud to claim 
as our forefathers. Nothing we can say, no window we can 
dedicate, can add to the fame of the patriot soldiers of the 
Revolution, but also let us not forget their wives and daugh- 
ters, whose ungrudging performance of the tedious house- 
hold duties, day by day and year by year, made possible the 
achievements, often far from home, of every man in Litch- 
field capable of bearing arms. One hundred years before 
the Revolution, after the Great Swamp Fight in King 
Philip's War, the General Assembly of Connecticut spread 









MEMORIAL WINDOW PRESENTED BY 
MARY FLOYD TALLMADGE CHAPTER, D. A, 



—5i— 

on its record these words : "There died many brave officers 
and soldiers, whose memory is blessed, and whose death 
redeemed our lives. The bitter cold, the tarled swamp, the 
tedious march, the strong* fort, the numerous and stubborn 
enemy they contended with, for their God, king and country, 
be their trophies over death. Our mourners, all over the 
colony, witness for our men that they were not unfaithful 
in that day." 

The men of the Revolution were worthy of their for- 
bears — let us strive to be equally worthy of them both. 

Just before unveiling the window, Mrs. Buel made the 
following address of unveiling and presentation : 

Mr. President and Members of the Litchfield Historical 
Society: — It is my privilege to-day to be the bearer of greet- 
ings to your Society from the Mary Floyd Tallmadge Chap- 
ter, Daughters of the American Revolution, on the occasion 
of the fiftieth anniversary of your organization. As the 
Chapter's official representative, I congratulate you warmly 
upon this happy event, upon the acquisition of this beautiful 
new building through the patriotic generosity of one whose 
name graces the membership rolls of both our Societies, 
and upon the era of continued energy and usefulness which 
opens before you. But as a Chapter, we feel especially 
privileged in being more intimately associated with your 
semi-centennial than as a mere bearer of greetings. Our 
greetings are accompanied by a gift, and this gift which we 
bring to you to-day in memory of those Revolutionary 
patriots whose lives and deeds are our common heritage and 
glory, will, we hope, be ever a bond of fellowship and 
sympathy between the two Societies — a golden wedding 
gift, as it were, which may prove the token of true union in 
a common cause. Our aims are identical, or, at the least, 
supplementary the one to the other. You seek to preserve 



—52— 

the relics and records of Litchfield's past ; we also strive for 
this, and add thereto the stimulation of our too often luke- 
warm patriotism, the veneration of our country's heroes, the 
love of our American ideals of life and government. 
Macaulay has well said that a "people which takes no pride 
in the achievements of remote ancestors will never achieve 
anything worthy to be remembered by remote descendants." 
We are proud of the achievements of Litchfield County men 
in our fight for freedom. We have just heard the tale well 
told of their devotion and their patriotism, and we esteem it 
an honor to ourselves to come to you to-day with this tribute 
to their memory written, not in cold and lifeless marble, but 
in the warm and living colors of that art which we associate 
the most closely with our religion — the art of the stained- 
glass worker who has glorified with his creations the great 
cathedrals of the past. We have to-day fulfilled a sacred 
duty — unwritten, but none the less binding — made to our- 
selves soon after our organization nearly eight years ago. 
It was then that the Chapter undertook to collect from all 
sources, and rescue from oblivion, the names of Litchfield's 
Revolutionary soldiers. It was then that Miss Josephine 
Richards, chairman of the committee in charge, began that 
painstaking work which resulted in the cataloguing of nearly 
450 names from the town of Litchfield alone. The work 
was enlarged to comprise the whole County in our Revolu- 
tionary rolls ; we enlisted the help of other County Chapters, 
whom I take this opportunity to thank for their hearty 
cooperation and valuable aid in compiling these records; 
our lists swelled to nearly 3,000 names, a veritable army; 
and all the time, hidden away in our hearts, was the 
thought — a memorial must sometime, somewhere, be erected 
to these men who made the fame of Litchfield County in the 
Revolution. Two years ago the opportunity came. This 
building was given to your Society. It was to have a large 
north window of Colonial proportions and design. At the 



—53— 

meeting of your Society in August, 1905, when the plans of 
this building were submitted by the large-hearted donor, it 
occurred to the speaker that the Chapter might be permitted 
to place a stained glass window there as a memorial to these 
men whom the two Societies would thus be united in honor- 
ing. The idea was heartily endorsed by the Chapter and 
resulted forthwith in the proposal which you did us the 
honor to accept. The gift was pledged, but how to redeem 
the pledge? Our thoughts turned naturally to the descend- 
ants of the patriots, and to the ever generous public, who 
might like an opportunity to share in this work; if not, 
another way would be found. But the descendants and the 
public responded royally to the call. Not only from Litch- 
field but from all over the country and even from abroad 
came help and cheering words of sympathy and encourage- 
ment from the descendants of our Litchfield County men; 
many descendants likewise of Revolutionary soldiers not 
from Litchfield County shared in the work ; the Litch- 
field public gave its ever ready patronage to Chapter enter- 
tainments and many another patriotic donor helped to swell 
the fund. I purposely give you this detailed account of our 
work because one of the most important and pleasur- 
able of my duties to-day is to make grateful acknowl- 
edgment, in the Chapter's name, of the generous assist- 
ance of all these donors, without whose help this 
memorial could not have materialized as soon as it did, 
within one year and a quarter of its conception. But 
although we give you the window to-day, the entire memorial 
plan is not quite finished, nor in the nature of the case can 
it be finished for some time to come. The names and 
records of the soldiers are still to be recorded in permanent 
and dignified form. Nearly 3,000 names cannot be placed 
on a window nor on any tablet ; they will be given to you, 
as soon as the list is practically complete, enrolled in a 
volume worthy of their fame; and the Chapter's pledge to 



—54— 

record memorial gifts to the window fund made by descend- 
ants in special memory of their own Revolutionary ancestors 
will be redeemed in full, and these two memorial records will 
be placed here in your care as soon as the material can be 
made ready for the engrosser. This material is still increas- 
ing by the addition of soldiers' names and the names of 
donors who wish to record their ancestors in the memorial 
book, and so it was not possible to have the book ready for 
to-day. The manuscript lists of the soldiers will be on 
exhibition in the reading room after the ceremonies. 

The Chapter has now reached the supreme moment in this 
its labor of love and patriotism. In unveiling this monu- 
ment to the founders of our country and presenting it to 
you, we for the first time do public honor to those whose 
names we have ever held enshrined in our heart of hearts. 

To the Revolutionary patriots of Litchfield County be for- 
ever given the tribute of a loving thought, a quickened heart- 
beat, a responsive thrill of love like theirs for the "Home 
and Country" they helped to give us. May this window not 
only commemorate their devotion and sacrifices ; may it also 
inspire present and future generations to evince the same 
loyalty to their ideals, the same self -forgetting love for our 
country and our flag, and all that we Americans stand for 
in the evolution of mankind. 

And now, Mr. President, in the name of the Mary Floyd 
Tallmadge Chapter, Daughters of the American Revolution, 
I unveil and present this window to your Society, and I com- 
mit to your care the sacred trust of holding in everlasting 
remembrance the Litchfield County patriots of the Revolu- 
tion. 

Mrs. Buel then drew to one side the large American flag 
which veiled the window. 

After the unveiling, Dr. Seymour, President of the His- 
torical Society, accepted the window, as follows : 



oy 



Madame Regent: — Allow me to express to you, the official 
representative of the Mary Floyd Tallmadge Chapter, 
Daughters of the American Revolution, the grateful thanks 
of the Litchfield Historical Society for the suggestive and 
beautiful window which you have just unveiled and pre- 
sented to us. We recognize very clearly the intrinsic value 
of this memorial as a work of art, and rejoice in the beauty 
which it adds to this hall, into the possession of which we 
have so fortunately come through the generous forethought 
of the donor. In itself this window is beautiful, but in two 
separate ways it has a beauty and a value over and above 
its own. For in the first place we see in this window the 
working out of a spirit in your organization worthy of the 
highest commendation ; viz., a determination, early formed 
as you tell us, to put into permanent form a commemoration 
of the men to whose patriotism and bravery we owe our 
independence, so nobly achieved in the days and in the spirit 
of 76. As you have already said, the deeds of those men 
are worthy of remembrance and commemoration. The suf- 
ferings and privations of those men, their fidelity to the call 
of duty and their brave deeds will never be lost sight of so 
long as our country shall be pervaded and ruled by a love 
of liberty and an earnest devotion to duty. Therefore 
your determination to weave an unfading wreath with which 
to decorate their memory honors your Association and gives 
value to the way in which you have wrought out your plan 
in this window now presented. 

Again, this window has value to us Litchfielders in 
that through your efforts so many have been led to con- 
tribute to its cost. This act on their part is sure to awaken 
a new interest in and to build up a stronger regard for the 
men and the principles which it is intended to commemorate. 
So, also, J think it will give to the contributors a fresh hold 
upon Litchfield as a center, attracting their love and draw- 
ing them back from time to time to this home of their 



-56- 

ancestors. This also will be good for us and for them. In 
accepting this gift from the D. A. R. I express the hope, a 
hope which I venture to think will be realized, that the 
present members of the Historical Society and those who 
in later times will succeed and follow us will ever find in it a 
pertinent reminder of the duty of a patriotic love for 
country, a love which will not suffer us nor them to be satis- 
fied and silent when evils exist which ought to be remedied. 
We of the present day may not be called upon to bear arms 
for our country's defence, but there are dangers which come 
not from outward foes but from foes within the State. Let 
it be our earnest purpose as it is our sacred duty to see that 
the republic takes no harm. 

Madame, we thank you and your associates and all whose 
aid has made this window possible. The Historical Society 
is your debtor and it will certainly pay the debt in the only 
way possible ; viz., by its gratitude fully felt and expressed, 
and its promise to prove a careful guardian of the gift. 

In introducing the last speaker Mrs. Buel said : 

When we stand before a beautiful work of art and are 
stirred by the thoughts it inspires, our minds naturally turn 
to the artist. We ask, who is the creator of the thing of 
beauty? whose spirit conceived, whose hand executed it? 
And so to-day we want to see and to hear from him who has 
expressed in glowing form and color this embodied Spirit of 
the Revolution. 

For the past year and a half it has been my privilege to 
know the creator of the window. Our intercourse in the 
common object which we had at heart has been and will ever 
be to me a pleasant memory. As a pleasure shared is ever 
a pleasure doubled, I begged him to complete the significance 
of this occasion by being present with us to-day, thereby 
giving the Chapter and the public of Litchfield the long- 



—57— 

desired opportunity to express in person their appreciation 
of his work. It is, therefore, with most sincere pleasure 
that I introduce our artist, Mr. Crowninshield. 

We are extremely sorry not to be able to round out the 
story of the speeches of Friday with a verbatim report of 
Air. Crowinshield's remarks, but he spoke extemporaneously 
and we have been unable to persuade him to write out for 
us what he said. He made an eloquent and stirring appeal 
for the best and noblest in art, in literature, in the lives of 
individuals and of nations. He said he believed in democracy 
and had no use for those people who said that a monarchial 
form of government was much better. To use his own 
expression, such people were his "despair." He believed in 
the D. A. R. because they were democratic, in the best and 
highest sense of that term. Turning to Mrs. Kinney, who 
had reported the membership of the organization as being 
60,000, he said, "Madame, you should be especially proud of 
being the mother of 60,000 patriotic daughters." Mr. 
Crowninshield also paid a magnificent tribute to women and 
the very important part they had always taken in the history 
of the world and declared that those nations were the most 
enlightened and doing the most for mankind where the high 
character and ennobling influence of womanhood were espe- 
cially emphasized. 

After the singing of "America" and the benediction by 
Rev. Storrs O. Seymour, D.D., the building was thrown 
open to the inspection of the general public, hundreds not 
being able to attend the exercises because of the limited 
capacity of the room. Tea was very delightfully served by 
the ladies of the Historical Society, in the museum of the 
Scientific Association, and this marked the formal closing of 
a day memorable even in the history of Litchfield and one 
which was filled only with enjoyment and profit from first 
to last. 



- 5 8- 

The memorial window is at the north end of the 
Historical Society's building. In shape it is of Colonial 
design with a large central panel and a smaller one on each 
side. The figure, which represents the martial spirit of '76, 
is that of a winged youth with a drawn, short sword in his 
right hand, while in his left, uplifted, he holds a branch of 
laurel. He is clothed in mail, with greaves and sandals, 
while a flame-colored toga-like garment partially envelops 
him. The coloring is especially rich and beautiful and a 
member of the local Chapter has very graphically written as 
follows: "The artist has caught the colors of the early 
morning light, the pinks and the reds of sunrise, for the 
draperies and in the far background rise hills which one can 
easily feel are the Litchfield Hills. At the right of the 
window stand some white birches and massed back of the 
central figure are flowering shrubs almost matching the 
laurel in their coloring." 

Forming a halo over the head of the figure are the words 
"Pro Patria/' while underneath the window is the follow- 
ing inscription, with the insignia of the D. A. R. in the 
center : 

In Memory of the Revolutionary Patriots of Litchfield County 

Presented to the 

Litchfield Historical Society 

by THE 

Mary Floyd Tallmadge Chapter 

of THE 

Daughters of the American Revolution 

1776-1907 

The members of Mary Floyd Tallmadge Chapter, 
D. A. R., are greatly pleased with the window and especially 
gratified with the close attention given the entire work, by 
the artist, Frederic Crowninshield. Mr. Crowninshield is 



— 59— 

the President of the Federation of Arts of New York and 
recognized as one of the leading- men in his line in America. 
He designed a number of windows that have been much 
admired in Emmanuel Church, Boston, and is in great 
demand as a designer of memorial windows. He is 
extremely versatile and has just published a very pretty 
book of poems and is now doing more as a painter in oils 
than a designer of windows. While in Litchfield Mr. 
Crowninshield was the guest of Dr. and Mrs. John L. Buel. 



Unbex 



PAGK 

Bigelow, John 22 

Bowman, Clara Lee 31 

Buel, John L., Mrs 24, 51 

Crowninshield, Frederic 57 

Ellsworth, William Webster 35 

Hart, Samuel, Rev. Dr 10 

Hutchins, John, Rev 2, 23 

Kilbourn, Dwight C 17 

Kinney, Sara T., Mrs 25 

Peck, F. W., Dr 19 

Seymour, Storrs O., Rev. Dr 2, 55 

Stedman, Clarence 21 

Van Winkle, Edgar B 21 

Wolcott, Roger 45 

Woodruff, George M 5 

Window, description of 58 



